The aim of this study was to determine the different soy protein concentrate (0, 15, 30, and 45%), defatted soy flour (0, 10, 20, and 30%), and wheat flour (10, 20, and 30%) contents replacing fish meal on physiochemical properties of extruded aquatic feed by using twin screw extruder. The moisture content, barrel temperature, die diameter, and screw speed were adjusted to 45%, 137°C, 4 mm, and 250 rpm, respectively. With the higher amount of soy protein concentrate replacing fish meal, the expansion ratio, swelling ratio, and water stability significantly increased while specific length and water holding capacity significantly decreased. With increasing the defatted soy flour contents, expansion ratio significantly increased, but specific length, water holding capacity and water stability significantly decreased. With increasing in the wheat flour contents, the specific length significantly decreased while the water stability significantly increased. In conclusion, high-quality aquatic feed was achieved in this study and could be used in the future.

The aim of the study was to determine physiochemical properties of extruded fish feed at different barrel temperature (120, 130, and 140°C) and moisture content (35, 40, and 45%). As barrel temperature and moisture content increased, expansion ratio, water holding capacity, and water stability increased, while bulk density, hardness, and swelling ratio decreased. Soaking time had significant (P<0.05) effect on water stability. Best water stability was observed on all samples soaked for 1 h. Protein digestibility was not significantly different among the samples while protein digestibility of extruded fish feed significant higher than raw materials.

This study evaluated the antimicrobial efficacy of different concentrations of ozonated water with organic matter, fetal bovine serum, at different concentrations and incubation times with bacteria. In the absence of organic matter, total eradication of up to 5 log of Escherichia (E.) coli was achieved, however, interference by organic matter led to inefficiency of ozonated water as a disinfecting agent. In addition, diminishing antimicrobial effects at higher temperatures, even in the absence of organic matter, were also demonstrated. These findings indicate that ozonated water will be a safe and effective disinfectant agent that could be useful in meat processing, especially an intestine processing, in Korean slaughter houses.

The objective of this study was to determine the efficacy of ozone in sanitizing water experimentally inoculated with the gram-positive food-poisoning bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. The bactericidal effect was measured after experimentally inoculated solutions were exposed to 0, 0.5, and 1.0 ppm ozone at several time points and different temperatures, in the presence of varying concentrations of different organic matter, namely, fetal bovine serum (FBS) or cattle liver. Results revealed inhibition of the bactericidal effect in the presence of the lowest percentage of FBS, but a lower extent of the inhibition occurred when liver was used as the organic matter. It was also apparent that a higher temperature and shorter ozone exposure time had led to a more reduced bactericidal efficacy than that under a lower temperature and longer ozone exposure. This study provides insight into the potential use of ozonated water as an effective and safe disinfectant in an abattoir setting.

Treatment of dextran sodium sulfate(DSS) on HeLa cells results to an enhanced susceptibility to Brucella(B.) abortus infection. An increase in the adherence, invasion and intracellular replication of B. abortus was observed in DSS-treated cells. Furthermore, a marked elevation in the intensity of F-actin fluorescence was also observed in DSS-treated cells compared with untreated B. abortus-infected cells. An upregulation of phagocytic signaling proteins by Western blot analysis demonstrated an apparent activation of ERK, p38α and JNK phosphorylation levels in B. abortus-infected DSS-treated cells compared with the control. Colocalization with LAMP-1 proteins was attenuated in DSS-treated cells upon intracellular trafficking of the pathogen compared with control cells. The results of this study demonstrated consistency with other pathogens. The uptake and intracellular replication of B. abortus is hypothesized to be stimulated by various dextran receptors such as C-type lectins that are involved in phagocytosis which can either be direct phagocytic receptors, modulators of the expression of other receptors or as opsonins leading to an enhanced internalization of B. abortus. The complexity of these interactions thus would warrant further investigation into the role of DSS in the pathogenesis of brucellosis. In summary, we conclude that DSS enhanced adhesion, phagocytosis and intracellular replication of B. abortus in epithelial cells which could lead to suppression of the innate immune system in chronic Brucella infection.

Bovine somatic cell nuclear transfer (bSCNT) embryos can develop to the blastocyst stage at a rate similar to that of embryos produced by in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, the efficiency of somatic cell cloning has remained low, and applications have been limited, irrespective of the nuclear donor species or cell types. One possible explanation is that the reprogramming factors of each oocyte is insufficient or not properly adapted for the receipt of a somatic cell nucleus, because it is naturally prepared only for the receipt of a gamete. Here, we would like to introduce the aggregation method (agSCNT), a new experimental system that enables and increase oocyte volume and examined its subsequent development. Judgement by the blastocyst formation rate or total cell number was significantly higher in the agSCNT group than that in the SCNT group, and was very similar to that in the control IVF group. Moreover, the cleavage formation rate in the agSCNT group (61.5 ± 1.3) was higher than that in the SCNT group (39.7 ± 2.1), while still less than that in the IVF group (75.4 ± 1.3). We also analyzed the epigenetic modifications in bovine IVF, agSCNT, and untreated SCNT embryos. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that agSCNT improves the in vitro developmental competence and quality of cloned embryos, as evidenced by increased total cell numbers (TC).

This study investigated the effect of Charcoal:Dextran Stripped fetal bovine serum (CDS FBS) and heat-inactivated FBS (HI FBS) in embryo culture medium on their ability to support in vitro development of bovine embryos. The developmental ability and quality of bovine embryos were determined by assessing their cell number, lipid content, mitochondrial activity, gene expression, and cryo-tolerance. The percentages of embryos that underwent cleavage and formed a blastocyst were significantly (P<0.05) higher in medium containing CDS FBS than in medium containing HI FBS (42.84 ± 0.78% vs. 36.85 ± 0.89%, respectively). Furthermore, the beneficial effects of CDS FBS on embryos were associated with a significantly reduced intracellular lipid content, as identified by Nile red staining, which increased their cryo-tolerance. The post-thaw survival rate of blastocysts was significantly (P<0.05) higher in the CDS FBS than in the HI FBS group (85.33 ± 4.84% vs. 68.67 ± 1.20%). Quantitative real-time PCR showed that the mRNA levels of acyl-CoA synthetase long-chain family member 3, acyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenase long-chain, hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA reductase, and insulin-like growth factor 2 receptor were significantly increased upon culture with CDS FBS. Moreover, the mRNA levels of sirtuin 1, superoxide dismutase 2, and anti-apoptotic associated gene B-cell lymphoma 2 in frozen-thawed blastocysts were significantly (P<0.05) higher in the CDS FBS group than in the HI FBS group, however, the mRNA level of the pro-apoptotic gene BCL2-associated X protein was significantly reduced. Taken together, these data suggest that supplementation of medium with CDS FBS improves in vitro bovine embryo developmental competence and cryo-tolerance.

Based on the inner-effect mechanism of transport infrastructure and regional economic growth, this paper builds a specialized spatial weight matrix by utilizing the panel data from 31 provinces in New Silk Road Economic Belt (NSREB) and other areas from 2005 to 2014, and combines with the spatial panel model to analyze the spatial spillover effects of transport infrastructure. According to the analysis, the transport infrastructure plays an obvious lead role in regional economy growth alongside the NSREB, and the economic growth invigorates common development in surrounding regions. In addition, differences were observed among the different transport infrastructure with regard to their influences on regional economic development, as the highway transport affects regional economic growth to a larger degree than railway transport.

Removal of phosphate from environmental water has become more important to prevent eutrophication. In the present study, sorption behavior of phosphate onto magnesite was investigated under different conditions. The optimum pH of phosphate adsorption was determined to be 6.0. The adsorption capacity was found to decrease with increasing temperature, which indicates that a low temperature was beneficial for phosphate adsorption. The sorption capacity for phosphate was found to be 10.2 mg/g at an initial concentration of 100 mg/L and a dose of 2 g/L. The first order kinetic equation and Freundlich isotherm model fit the data well. Phosphate adsorption on magnesite was explained by electrostatic attraction and weak physical interactions.

In Korea, a serious amphibian disease caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has been reported from historical samples collected in the 1900s. In this study, we continue to evaluate the current prevalence of chytridiomycosis in the Korean Peninsula and we include imported frogs from America to our analysis. Non-invasive skin swabs were taken from 275 apparently healthy frogs, and Bd was detected in five free living frogs by the nested PCR protocol consisting of two species: Bombina orientalis and Rana catesbeiana, from Gyeongnam and Cheonbuk provinces. These frogs comprised about 2% of the total number of free living samples. This study might be useful for understanding amphibian chytridiomycosis in Korea.

In recent years, the tourism experience of tourists has been impacted seriously with the increase in the number of tourists. Psychological Carrying Capacity (PCC) as an important part of Tourism Carrying Capacity (TCC), is an important criterion for measuring the quality of tourism experience. It is also an important and necessary means of tourism management. Daerungwon, as a symbol of the Gyeongju city, has not been studied on TCC. In this study, the number and the satisfaction degree of tourists in Daerungwon were investigated hourly. Then the mathematical relationship between the two variables was established with regression analysis method. Based on these, the study researched the change rules of the PCC in Daerungwon. The results showed that: (1) The satisfaction degree curve presented inverted “U” shape rather than monotonically decreasing shape with the increase of the number of tourists in Daerungwon. (2) When the instantaneous number of tourists is 193, the satisfaction degree of tourists is the highest. When the instantaneous number is 382, the descent speed of satisfaction degree is the fastest. The best PCC in Daerungwon is 1,198 persons per day. And when the number of tourists reached 2,372, the satisfaction degree will drop quickly. Finally the study verified the influencing factors of PCC from the view of tourists and put forward suggestions on management based on PCC research results. The achieved results can provide the references to the tourism management of Daerungwon.

In the present study, we examined potential roles of glucose and pyruvate in nuclear and cytoplasmic maturation of porcine oocytes. In the presence and absence of 10% porcine follicular fluid (PFF), either 5.6 mM glucose or 2mM pyruvate effect on meiotic maturation and followed development ability. However, DOs doesn't take full advantage of the glucose in medium, only pyruvate can increase MII rate and follow early embryo development ability significance. COCs were matured with 200 uM pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) inhibitor (dehydroepiandrosterone, DHEA) or 2 μM glycolysis inhibitor (iodoacetate, IA), significantly lower levels of GHS in the DHEA an IA treated oocytes and the levels of ROS were higher significantly in the DHEA treated oocytes, treatment with DHEA significantly reduced the intra-oocyte ATP and NADPH level. Blastocysts from DHEA or IA treated group also presented higher apoptosis levels, meanwhile, the percentage of proliferating cells was dramatically lower than the non-treated group. In conclusion, our results suggest that 10% PFF promoted oocytes make full use of energy, glucose metabolism during in vitro maturation inseparable from the cumulus cells, PPP and glycolysis promoted porcine oocytes cytoplasmic maturation by supplying energy and reducing oxidative stress.

Bee pollen have been used for centuries as a kind of traditional medicine and food diets additive due to their nutritional and biological properties. The present study was to evaluate the biological features of ethanol extracts of 18 different bee pollen (EEBP) samples collected from 16 locations of South Korea. Our results indicated most of the EEBP samples showed 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging activity, inhibitory activities against human β-amyloid precursor cleavage enzyme (BACE-1), and antiproliferative activities towards five cancer cell lines. However, these EEBP samples did not present human acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitory activities, and intestinal bacteria growth inhibitory activities.

High resolution reconstruction technology is developed to help enhance the spatial resolution of observational images for ground-based solar telescopes, such as speckle masking. Near real-time reconstruction performance is achieved on a high performance cluster using the Message Passing Interface (MPI). However, much time is spent in reconstructing solar subimages in such a speckle reconstruction. We design and implement a novel parallel method for speckle masking reconstruction of solar subimage on a shared memory machine using the OpenMP. Real tests are performed to verify the correctness of our codes. We present the details of several parallel reconstruction steps. The parallel implementation between various modules shows a great speed increase as compared to single thread serial implementation, and a speedup of about 2.5 is achieved in one subimage reconstruction. The timing result for reconstructing one subimage with 256×256 pixels shows a clear advantage with greater number of threads. This novel parallel method can be valuable in real-time reconstruction of solar images, especially after porting to a high performance cluster.

There is a general consensus in the literature that impulse buying is normatively wrong, but accounts for a substantial volume of the goods sold every year across the broad range of product categories, including fashion products. Research revealed that young consumers particularly contributed greatly to the increase of impulse buying. While lack of self-control has been found strongly associated with the unplanned nature of impulse buying, with an environment of abundance and consumerism, self-indulgence, rather than lack of self-control, may become a more important driver for impulse buying for modern consumers (Sharma, Sivakumaran, & Marshall, 2011). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate how self-indulgence influences young consumers’ impulse buying and the post purchase consumer regret. This study also aims to test the role of fashion consciousness in the relationship between young consumers’ self-indulgence and impulse buying for fashion products. Self-indulgence is considered a hedonistic tendency, which includes enjoying spending money on oneself, buying things for one’s own pleasure, and trying to enjoy life (Sharma, Sivakumaran, & Marshall, 2011). It was recognized as one of the two opposing cognitive forces leading to impulse behavior (Miao, 2011). While the impulse to purchase is comprised of anticipated pleasures and immediate gratification (Rook, 1987), ironically, consumer regret is one of the major emotional consequences associated with impulse buying. There are two types of consumer regret: cognitive dissonance, resulted from an immediate post-purchase comparison of what was purchased versus the other available alternatives, and consumer guilt, related specifically to the consumption decision situations. Literature suggested that individuals show interest in fashion products with the belief that fashion products will contribute to their appearance, image, and/or bring enjoyment to their life (Workman & Kidd, 2000). In that same token, an individual with high self-indulgence tendency is more likely to show interest in fashion in hopes of identifying fashion items for indulgence purpose. Moreover, this indulgence motivated fashion consciousness will more likely lead to high impulse buying for fashion products. Based on the literature, hypotheses were developed for this study as represented in the following figure. Data was collected using a survey of college students majored in textile/fashion management at a large southeast university in the USA. A total of 190 surveys were distributed and returned. The majority of the subjects were females (73.7%), white (74.7%), and held part-time work (56.7%). Existing scales were adopted to measure self-indulgence (Sharma, Sivakumaran, & Marshall, 2011) and fashion consciousness (Bruner & Hensel, 1998). Impulse buying behavior and post-purchase regret were measured by asking subjects to retroactively recall their shopping trips for fashion products during the past three months. A group of items developed by the researchers were used to measure both the impulse buying behavior and consumer regret. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was first employed to assess the psychometric properties of the constructs. Overall, the fit indices of the measurement model were acceptable (NFI=0.86, IFI=0.935, RMSEA=0.066, CMIN/DF=1.7). A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was conducted to test the relationship proposed in the hypotheses. To test the mediating effect of fashion consciousness on the relationship between self-indulgence and impulse buying behaviors, a bootstrapping bias-corrected confidence interval procedure was conducted. Overall, the fit indices of the SEM model were acceptable (CMN/df=1.338, NFI=0.90, IFI=0.97, RMSEA=0.044). The SEM results suggested that self-indulgence had a significant influence on impulse buying for fashion products directly and indirectly via fashion consciousness. The impulse purchase behavior had a positive influence on the consumers’ feeling of guilt for the impulse purchase behavior, while no significant influence was found on cognitive dissonance. This research makes several contributions to the literature of impulse buying. First, the study suggests that consumers’ self-indulgence exerts significant direct and indirect influences on consumers’ impulse buying for fashion products. This result may provide an explanation to the phenomenon of increasing impulse buying behavior in the marketplace, even though it is widely considered as a “misbehavior”. Secondly, this study suggests a significant mediating role of fashion consciousness in the relationship between self-indulgence on consumers’ impulse buying for fashion products. The abundance of fashion products in the market and the appreciation of the social and affective function of fashion products contribute to the chain effect from self-indulgence to fashion consciousness and finally to impulse purchase for fashion products. Third, this study confirms the negative guilt feeling resulted from the impulse buying behavior.

Since the first success of animal cloning, somatic cell nuclear transfer presented various ideas in many research areas such as regenerative medicine. However, SCNT embryos has poor survival rate. Therefore, numerous researches carried out to enhance the developmental capability of porcine nuclear transfer embryos. Cytochalasin B, demecolcine, latrunculin A, cycloheximide and 6-dimethylaminopurine are efficient chemicals treated in post-activation procedure to increase the efficiency of SCNT. This review study is aim to investigate the effects of these chemicals applied to post-activation in porcine SCNT. Cytochalasin B, demecolcine, latrunculin A are cytoskeletal manuplators inhibit extrusion of pseudo-polar body. Cytochalasin B and demecolcine showed considerably higher blastocyst formation proportion (26-28%) compared to when they are not treated (16%). And when latrunculin A was treated for postactivation, blastocyst formation proportion was increased in SCNT embryos exposed to LA (38%) than those in control (14%). On the other hand, cycloheximide and 6-dimethylaminopurine are protein synthesis and kinase inhibitors. And they help to maintain Ca2+ fluctuation in oocytes. Cleavage and blastocyst rates of NT embryos were increased when they were exposed to CHX (16.9% and 5.4% with no CHX).And 6-DMAP also showed higher blastocyst formation (21.5% compared to 15.7%, control). Although all these chemicals have different mechanisms, they showed developmental competence enhancement in NT embryos. However, there are only few studies comparing each chemical’s post-activation effect. Therefore, further research and study should be conducted to find optimal chemical for improving the efficiency of SCNT.

This study is performed to evaluate the effect of insulin in the porcine parthenogenetic embryo development. In porcine embryo culture, insulin is helpful factor in the process of embryo development. To identify this, insulin is used in pig embryos development. Therefore, this study was performed to investigate the effect of insulin on early embryonic development in pigs. For that, insulin positive or negative (0, 10 ug/mL) was supplemented in the porcine IVM media and then compared two groups divided by the cytoplasm of the black groups and white ring groups based on the distribution of lipid material of the cell cytoplasm in microscope. In maturation rates of porcine oocytes, significant higher black group rates were shown in the insulin positive groups compared with other groups (56.0±2.1 vs 46.2±0.3). In the embryo culture, black groups were showed the significant higher cleavage rates (82.1±0.8, 78.3±0.1 vs 63.2±0.3, 63.4±0.0), and blastocyst formation rates (15.5±3.6, 16.6±0.4 vs 11.7±1.3, 7.4±0.2) regardless of whether the addition of insulin. Also, black groups were showed higher cell number of blastocyst (33.2±2.5, 35.5±2.6 vs 31.2±2.1, 31.3±2.2). In conclusion, supplement of insulin producing black group in vitro maturation, it was effective in vitro maturation and embryonic development of pig embryos.

The bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) mainly contributes to the structural integrity, survival and protection barrier against harsh environments. Therefore, the early stages in LPS or lipid A biosynthesis are attractive targets in the identification and development of inhibitors which would be effective against infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria. The bacterial outer membrane proteins (OMPs) meanwhile function as maintenance for structure, adhesion to other cells and substances, as well as development of resistance to antimicrobials. The LPS and LPS-related molecules, and OMPs are important immunogenic components of several important pathogens including Brucella, which have been extensively used in immunological studies and in the diagnosis of diseases. Here we review the importance, structure, functions and immunogenic aspects of LPS and OMPs particularly of Brucella which can be targeted for the prevention and diagnosis of brucellosis.